Recovering Evangelicals

At this point in our mini-series looking at spiritual/religious experiences, we thought it would be good to understand how we perceive the rest of the world around us, including our relationships with other people, or our pets. This is still one of the biggest questions in science: one that is still entirely unresolved. And it […]

Many Christians insist that this is the main thing that distinguishes Christianity from all other religions: “we have a personal relationship with the Divine”. I certainly heard this many times during the first few decades of my spiritual journey. The problem for me was, I just didn’t seem to ever experience what they claimed. The […]

It’s a common phenomenon: people who say they’ve left the faith, but they just keep coming back to pick at it. It left a nasty wound, which has since scabbed over, but they keep lifting the edges We looked at the demographics behind this … not just in America, but also in Canada, the UK, […]

We did not anticipate two seemingly unrelated episodes would be so fertile, producing a mini-series of six episodes and a massive volume of listener feedback. In hindsight now, though, we can see the two are causally-related … each episode unleashed more feedback which gave us more material for yet another provocative episode, and the cycle […]

Our previous four episodes, and the tremendous listener feedback they generated, referred often to Evangelicals and Evangelicalism. Some listeners suggested that those terms were applied incorrectly, and that we should instead be using labels like Fundamentalists, Christian Nationals, Moderates, Modernists, or Liberals. Do those who self-identify as “Evangelicals” … in their dail...

The previous three episodes had us unpacking statistics, quotes, and teachings pertaining to Evangelicalism which … really didn’t make Evangelicals look very good at all. It made us wonder if we might be seen as being too hard on Evangelicals. Even “persecuting” them. And then, the Internet being what it is … delivered up to […]

Months ago, we planned to kick off Season 2 with two episodes that … we thought … were quite unrelated: the Insurrection at Capitol Hill, and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. And yet our research revealed a common thread running through both: QAnon and Evangelicals walking hand-in-hand in revolt. While interviewing people to gauge their awareness and […]

It’s been almost a year and a half since we’ve had COVID-19, and over half a year since we’ve talked about it. It’s time for an update. Global deaths have now exceeded 3 million, despite our having several vaccines with high efficacy. At the heart of this paradox: people refusing to wear masks, to socially […]

We’ve all seen images of the storming of the US Capitol.  Among those many images, did you notice the pictures of people carrying Bibles or crosses? Signs with Christian slogans?  A flag with the words: “Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my president”? What was the connection between Christianity and the insurrectionists at the Capitol? […]

After a hiatus of a couple months that stretched out to eight, we’re back! Here, we re-connect with our audience, look back at Season 1, and give a preview of what’s coming in Season 2. As always, tell us what you think. If you want to play this episode later on your device, look for […]

View the autosave [This is a re-posting of an episode with a broken link] There’s never been a shortage of reasons to think that the Apocalypse was right around the corner.  But Covid-19 and worldwide socio-political-economic unrest have recently ratcheted that fear to a whole new level.  It takes some effort to not get caught […]

. Looking back at the comments and responses which have accumulated at this WordPress site, at Facebook, and sent to us by email, we thought it was time to respond to a few of them in more detail. We noticed a couple recurring themes, one of which related to the Bible itself: All great questions. […]

“I found my way out of Young Earth Creationism because I tried to prove Young Earth Creationism … and failed.” These are the words of our guest today. But it’s a well-worn confession, made by many before him who walked the same beaten path. Renowned historian Dr. Ronald Numbers identifies a recurring theme in the […]

When we read a paper1 published a couple years ago by last week’s guest — Dr. Chris Barrigar — we felt his idea was a perfect book-end to our recent discussions about Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design. We’ve often referred to an image of God rolling certain ingredients — thermodynamics; entropy; quantum mechanics; biological […]

After exploring one end of the spectrum of Creationist beliefs (Young Earth; Intelligent Design), we now move to the other end. This week, we talk to Dr. Chris Barrigar an Anglican pastor from Montreal, Quebec, who’s proposed an idea by which God might have front-loaded the intrinsic properties of the primal cosmic egg in such […]

Right now, Covid-19 is turning the world up-side-down. Our social systems … education systems … industries … economies … everything has been shut down. Healthcare is straining. And we’re scrambling for answers to how to deal with this thing. Many don’t know that we actually ran into Covid’s brother just less than 20 years ago, […]

We all do this: we dismiss verifiable scientific fact because we think we know better, or because we think we’re an outlier case. For some, this looks fairly innocuous. Resorting to medicinal herbs and Gwyneth Paltrow to treat health problems. Thinking that cell phones cause brain cancer … wind turbines cause leukemia … 5G networks […]

Christianity has always existed alongside of science. Some of the greatest Biblical characters were highly educated people (Moses; Daniel; Solomon; Saul of Tarsus). Most of the early Church Fathers were fully schooled in the highest forms of Greek thinking (Irenaeus; Clement; Origen; Augustine). Many leading scientists from the past (Sir Isaac Newton; William Buckland) and […]

When modern science conflicts with a Young Earth Creationist worldview, two common responses are either to deny the science (last week’s topic) or reject the faith. This week, we talk to someone who opted for that 2nd coping strategy. But the person we talked to isn’t just another one of the many people who quietly […]

You may have heard that when an ostrich perceives a threat, it responds by sticking its head in the sand. The implied logic being that it no longer sees the danger, so it no longer feels threatened. “Out of sight, out of mind.” It turns out that this phenomenon isn’t true. It’s a myth! It […]

Young Earth Creationism.  “Really?” … you might ask. “Why are we still talking about this?  I mean, how many people still think this way?”  According to polling agencies like Pew and Gallup … “many!” For example, Pew asked two groups of people: “did humans evolve, or have they always existed in their present form?” The [&#8...

Are certain cosmological constants “too good to be random or coincidental”? Apologies to my high school geography teacher. The only thing I seem to remember learning in that class was how to balance pencils on the end of their erasers!? I’d seen street performers turn the art of balancing odd things into an impressive revenue […]

Bill Gates created Microsoft. The Pharaoh Cheops built the Great Pyramid in Egypt. George Washington founded the United States of America. But did any of them actually get their hands dirty doing so? God may have created everything. But did he carefully design it  — put molecule to molecule … assemble the bits and pieces […]

The last in this four part mini-series. Previously, we’ve talked about what science has to say about “Original Sin,” and then last week about seven ideas the Church has had for ten or twenty centuries about “Atonement.” Here, we see how those seven ideas about Atonement stand up to our new modern understanding of human […]

Atonement … aka, salvation. The whole point behind Christianity.  In fact, the main reason we have religions of any kind.  Atonement is basically about finding a way to God. Given that this is so central, you might think that the Christian church would have had a unified understanding about this right from its earliest days, […]